


Not His Type

by Vlara



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Aggressive Hawke, Canon-Typical Violence, Evolution of a relationship, Friends to Lovers, Gradual Attraction, M/M, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 21:38:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14145108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vlara/pseuds/Vlara
Summary: Hawke loves Fenris because of, as opposed to in spite of, his prickly character. A broad strokes look at their relationship where physical attraction comes later rather than first.





	Not His Type

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story several years ago and am posting it here because I just now got around to getting an account. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
> 
> Just for some background, I was inspired to write this based on my own experiences. When I first met my husband, I didn't find him attractive. I've always liked waify guys, and he is heavy and muscular. I found, however, as I grew to love him, that changed. I found him more and more attractive until my entire preference in men shifted. That's kind of what I was going for here.

Hawke definitely knew what he wanted. He had always been that way: direct, decisive. Scanning a room, he immediately set in stone exactly whose advances he would entertain. It was always the same kind of man, even those faceless phantoms of his masturbatory fantasies. He wanted someone broad, muscular, someone who would try to resist him, so he could watch thick muscles jerk under smooth skin. He liked dark hair and chins rough with stubble that would chafe his throat when eager lips kissed there. So stringent was he in these criteria that he flatly rejected Anders's flirtations because his hair was just a bit too blonde. That probably explained why his current relationship had progressed the way it did.

It had taken time, a long time, for Hawke to look at Fenris as anything other than a teammate. He didn't make friends easily, Varric and Isabella being the sole exceptions. In general, people annoyed him. They drifted through life tiptoeing through eggshells, carefully skirting topics deemed controversial, dancing around requests and negative responses. He had little patience for inanity and was known for rudely cutting people off to demand they get to the point or stop wasting his time. The Tevinter warrior was different; he wielded words like his weapon, head-on and with ruthless precision. Even his rarely utilized wit stung like sharpened needles. Conversations with him were concise, easy to follow. He never endeavored to candy coat his feelings and would stare the powerful mage in the eye while he hissed about the inherent evils of magic. It inspired something like respect in Hawke, and he let it come, for it was rare for him to regard someone with anything other than disdain.

On the third anniversary of Fenris's escape from slavery, Hawke happened by. He had come to ask for help searching for a missing woman. He stayed when Fenris hurled a bottle of Aggregio at the wall. His heart skipped a beat at its unexpectedness, at the violence. He ignored the faint whispers of desire the act caused to listen to a tipsy Fenris report the tragic story of his past. The elf didn't lament, didn't wax poetic about the brutal treatment he'd received. He simply told the story, grimacing in remorse when he got to the fate of the Fog Warriors. Engrossed, the mage felt honored, doubly so when Fenris admitted he was the first person he had told, the first person he had wanted to tell. His respect for this incredibly strong man grew and flirted, ever so briefly, with affection. He wanted to drag his fingers along the man's jaw even though it was hairless and slightly feminine in the way all male elves' were. He fisted his hand at his side and thanked him instead.

Taking Fenris with him to the Deep Roads had been an easy choice, a good choice he was later able to assert. Bartrand abandoned them there in the depths of a lost world. Varric raged at the door, cursed his brother with all the power his eloquence afforded. Merrill wilted into a blubbering heap of fear and hopelessness. Fenris, however, stood as calm and imposing as ever near the tunnel entrance in the back of the room. He looked at Hawke expectantly, ready to move forward, ready to plow through all obstacles in their path to reach freedom. It was not a matter of  _if_  they would press on into the dark abyss, only  _when_. In that moment, Hawke decided that he liked the elf and realized with pleasant surprise that they were already friends. It was reassuring to have him there, and he bellowed the command to move on at a sharp nod that caused too white hair to expose a guarded green eye.

Back in Kirkwall, things were calm. Their friendship was understood. Fenris joined Hawke for errands, for meals. They spoke little but said much. The newly affluent man spent countless evenings listening to the rhythmic strokes of whetstone on metal as Fenris sat with him in near silence while he studied scrolls to increase his magical ferocity. He knew that the elf hated mages, and he knew that he had been spared that hatred, even if they never actually discussed it. Hawke was grateful, though he wasn't sure why. He knew he shouldn't care, and for weeks at a time, he convinced himself he didn't.

It was almost a tradition to have drinks at the Hanged Man when the four of them went adventuring together. They were as thick as the thieves they sometimes were. Varric often encouraged them to drink until a pleasant haze fell over the world, softening all the hard edges. Once, Isabela laughed when Fenris angrily rebuked her drunken advances for the hundredth time that evening. "Ooh!" she cooed in mock hurt, "so prickly." The elf very nearly bristled, the feathers on his armor and the iron spikes in their centers standing out straighter. He told her to shut up and called her a whore. Hawke was fairly certain he shouldn't have found that endearing, but he just couldn't stop staring at the offended warrior even though his waist was far too small.

He learned, quite accidentally, that the stoic elf couldn't read. Fenris snarled and practically dared the man to tell him he was weaker for not knowing. Hawke was no teacher, not patient, not kind, but he  _wanted_  to teach his companion. He wanted to make him stronger, even more powerful, so he came over every evening with quills and parchment in hand. Instead of insulting his unanticipated student with children's stories, he spent hours writing accounts of their adventures in simple sentences with thick, neat strokes. He never told Fenris the words he struggled with until his teeth gritted in frustration and reluctant green eyes turned to him not asking for help. Hawke was awed at how dignified he remained even with his vulnerability laid bare. After one lesson, in the courtyard where the moonlight made the ex-slave's horrific scars look somehow beautiful, he almost told him so but chose instead to drown his words in heady red wine.

The sky was dark with an impending storm the day Hadriana came upon them without warning. They were on their way to the Dalish camp to inquire about ironbark when they were attacked by a group of slavers. Fenris glowed with fury, and Hawke wondered if he glowed too, for he had never been more furious in his life. The nerve of these fools, the audacity of them to think they would take his comrade from him, that they would tame the formidable warrior to bow under their will made lightning spark against his fingertips. The joy of destroying them was nothing, however, compared to the sweet victory of Fenris's vengeance. The look on that witch's face when her heart was crushed under a steel-tipped grip fed his bloodlust more than sated it, and after the ex-slave spewed mage-hating vitriol at him and fled, he hunted down an entire mercenary guild before he went home on edge and strangely empty.

Fenris was waiting for him when he got to his estate. The flustered elf apologized awkwardly, and turned to flee under the force of his own embarrassment. Hawke grabbed his arm, an instinctive gesture to keep him from leaving. In the next moment, the burly man found himself pinned to the wall by the lithe warrior. It was different and exciting. It was better. The white of Fenris's hair contrasted with his dark skin. His slender jaw looked deliciously delicate as he swallowed Hawke's thick cock down his throat. The mage's large hands fit perfectly over sharp, protruding hip bones, and when his lover moaned his name in release he wondered if had ever seen anyone more attractive than the man beneath him whose usually stern lips were curved into a satisfied grin.

Hawke refused to admit it was a mistake. He stood by his decisions, and even as Fenris paced in front of the fire, fully clothed before the sun had begun to peek over the horizon and making excuses about why they couldn't be together, he believed that he had made the right choice. Fenris should be his lover. That was who he wanted, and that was who he would get. It would happen in time, he had to relent as Fenris walked out the door despite his reassurances. Hawke called after him in a voice that shook the mortar in the walls, "I would never have thought you a coward!"

He had every intention of shunning Fenris, of pushing him out of his life at least temporarily to punish him for fleeing his side. It was his decisiveness, his sharp tongue, and the way he openly sneered at anyone he didn't like that had drawn him to the elf. Seeing him falter under his own insecurities made Hawke uncomfortable. He looked far too dainty falling apart in the firelight, something the mage found entirely unappealing. He was going to deliberately leave the warrior behind the next morning at the Hanged Man just to watch his deep green eyes dull with regret, but when he arrived, those eyes were already glazed with shame and fear. He met the man's gaze without hesitation though, and his back was as straight as the broadsword strapped to it. The thick red sash from Hawke's sleeping robe was secured around the metal gauntlet that encased his thin wrist. It shouldn't have swayed him, certainly shouldn't have made him feel bad for the elf that deserved every bit of his suffering. It shouldn't have been enough, but somehow it was. His plans for retribution evaporated, and Fenris was at his side as surely as he had ever been.

It wasn't long after that the Qunari threat that loomed like a great tidal wave off the coast came crashing down upon them with a heavier hand than they had imagined. Nobles were dragged through the streets by their ankles, screaming like babes as Hawke and his companions made their way determinedly to the Viscount's Keep. When the head of the city's former leader rolled at his feet, he did not look down at it in horror. He glared into the Arishok's eyes and demanded he leave, a thought the massive Qunari would not entertain until his relic was returned. Luckily, Isabela's betrayal lasted for little more than an hour, and she burst through the doors, sauntering up with relic in hand. The Qunari were unwilling to allow her freedom, and Hawke was faced with the choice between the life of one of his very few friends and the lives of all the citizens of Kirkwall who looked to him for protection. It was Fenris who suggested the duel. It had to have been, for even if they had known it was an option, none of his other companions would have allowed him to risk his life in single combat against such a formidable enemy. Fenris alone understood that he would want to know, that he would fight, that the Arishok would lie dead at his feet. As they left the Keep followed by a cacophonous flood of cheers and praise, the newly dubbed Champion leaned over to a sharply pointed ear and whispered his thanks softly so no one else could hear. The elf nodded and did not look at him. Hawke's chest tightened, and he reveled in the feeling he refused to admit was love.

Years passed in relative quiet. With the Qunari vanquished, there was not much for the Champion to do but guide his elven companion through more and more difficult texts until they were reading together, both confident and capable. They always spoke afterward, discussed the ideas they extracted from the pages. Hawke discovered Fenris was as cynical as he was, and they found kinship in their mutual distrust and annoyance with the rest of the world. It pleased the mage to no end that he was allowed almost exclusive access to the generally serious elf's dark sense of humor. He never would have imagined he'd get so much enjoyment out of just spending time with his one-time lover, nor had he thought that on those rare occasions when he tucked bone white hair behind the pointed tips of his ears or laid his broad hand across slender shoulder blades, Fenris would allow it.

When Hawke met Zevran in that dank cave on Sundermount, he had been shocked. Not because the former Crow was an assassin and a companion of the legendary Warden, but because he found himself attracted to him. His light hair, his smooth, almost feminine jaw, the way his leathers hung on his narrow hips all ignited a small spark of lust within the mage, much to his confusion. He had never been one to fall for practiced charmers like Zevran, so it was obviously a physical desire, but the rogue was not a broad bearded brunette like every other gorgeous man he had yearned for. Even though he couldn't understand it, when that teasing voice invited him for a night of pleasure, he was half-tempted to accept his offer. That idea was banished like a demon to the Fade when Fenris stepped forward from behind him every bit the vicious predator of his namesake. His eyes were narrowed into a furious, possessive glare, and his words were like ice, chilling Hawke to the bone as he snarled at the Antivan to  _back off_  in no uncertain terms. Suddenly Zevran's hair was too dark, too long, his skin too plain without intricate lines of lyrium carved into his flesh. When their business was finished, Fenris looked directly into his eyes for a long moment, then turned to go, pointedly not apologizing. It only made the flames of Hawke's desire burn brighter.

When Fenris asked the mage to join him while he met his sister, he agreed without hesitation even though they both knew it was a trap. He stood tall next to the warrior as his former master descended the stairs of the Hanged Man. Seeing that wrinkled crone of a magister, imagining his comrade, his equal, as a subservient whipping boy made Hawke ashamed to be a mage for the first time. It made him ashamed to be a human. How could anyone try to destroy the spirit of such a confident, strong man? Danarius's reptilian voice suggested arrogantly that he had great knowledge of Fenris's many  _talents_ , and the idea of the man's talon-like fingers on the soft skin he so desired caused him to move without thinking. In a flash, before the object of his ire could finish speaking, he had encased him in thick, heavy stone. The room glowed faintly blue as the elf's razor-edged gauntlets entered the chest of the man that tormented his every hour. A sick grin twisted his normally stoic features as he rejoiced in his kill, then fell into a forlorn frown as he crushed the traitorous heart of his only family. Under the burden, he exploded, ranting about the evils of magic, cursing all those who knew its touch. His voice was tinged with quiet desperation as he reflected on the loss of his only connection to the past. Hawke reminded him he wasn't alone, that he could always count on him to be at his side even though Isabela and Varric were watching.

The night of their reconciliation was probably the best night of Hawke's life. It was incredible to feel Fenris's skin again, to run his fingers along the delicate curves of his hips. The warrior was so strong, so in control, and it was easy to submit under the power hidden in his lean muscles. As he lay there, stretched and keening, the mage whispered shaky promises against soft lips. He swore he would never go, never allow the elf to leave, and Fenris swore back as he pistoned his hips into the willing man beneath him. In the afterglow, when the last vestiges of sunlight were fading past the horizon, they lay entwined in the silken sheets of Hawke's bed. "I'm not a coward," Fenris asserted, looking into his lover's eyes seriously.

"I know," the arrogant mage replied with a hint of amusement. "I could never love a coward."


End file.
